Untouchable (boyxboy)

Chapter 23

Isaac stays with me that night and through the following days. He is, as corny as it sounds, my rock, and my safe-haven in the storm.

He makes sure I eat, and sleep, and smile; and gradually, I re-accustom myself to his presence and to his touch, to his unabashed honesty and generous affection.

He gives in a way few people know how—without asking for or expecting anything in return.

I hope that someday I'll be able to do the same for him, but for now I allow myself to simply take what he so willingly wants to give.

When my dad is well enough to come home, Isaac is there with me to get him settled and make sure he's okay. With his EMT training, I feel safe relying on him, able to relax as I know I wouldn't otherwise.

Finally, with my dad stable and everything calm once more, Isaac leaves. The house feels too quiet and empty without him, and I miss him almost as soon as he's gone.

Unlike the last time we parted, though, it isn't a painful feeling. He's not beyond my reach, and I know he'll come back if I call.

Over the next several weeks, we see each other almost every day.

He watches me practice on the small digital piano in my room with the rapt attention of someone in the best seats at the Met, and takes me out for coffee and sweet, cliché walks on the beach. He even convinces me to let him teach me to surf, and doesn't hold it against me when I decide I prefer to watch from the dry safety of the shore after all.

Without the stress of a wedding, or dark secrets, looming over us, we can take our time getting to know one another again; and yet—as silly as it sounds—I agree with him when he tells me he feels like he's always known me somehow.

We get closer in other ways too.

He kisses me every chance he gets—sometimes at the most inappropriate times, like right in front of my dad—and slowly, I grow confident enough to be the one to kiss him first.

I also discover that if music were a drug, Isaac would be addicted. Moreover, that I'd have the weird superpower to roofie him with my admittedly derivative compositions.

Case in point: one afternoon, after I show him the latest little piece I'm working on, he takes me by the hand as soon as the last note sounds, pulls me from the piano bench, and leads me to my bed. Seemingly overcome, he lies back and sets my hand to the center of his chest.

"Touch me like that, Felix," he says. "The way you touch the music. The way it makes you feel. Make me feel it, too."

"Isaac...I don't..."

I'm still very shy about initiating things, always unsure I'm 'doing it right,' always with a weird disconnect between my body and my mind—too cerebral to be truly sensual.

Isaac, on the other hand, has no such issue. He's comfortable in his body, lives fully in the physical, and gives himself over to sensation with ease.

Sitting up slightly, he pulls off his shirt, and then guides my hands over his body.

"I'm an instrument, Felix," he says. "Play me."

I do my best, exploring his body with my hands, my fingers ghosting over his smooth, sun-browned skin, feeling the firm muscles in his shoulders and chest, and the softer regions below his ribs. I discover the ticklish places along his sides, and learn how he shivers when I kiss the stiff little circles on his breast, and the sensitive surrender of his throat.

Eventually, I'm bold enough to work open the fly of his pants, freeing his blood-hardened prick, and taste the earthy salt of his most intimate skin. I'm still not able to take him in my mouth, but I kiss and lick and glide my hand up and down his length, and that seems like more than enough.